Objective We evaluated effectiveness and performance of medical rescue after Lushan earthquake during 2 weeks, and enriched Wenchuan lessons to provide useful references for emergency medical rescue (EMR) after similar earthquake worldwide. Methods We collected and analyzed official information, public documents, news release, and relevant information from websites, and then we systematically reviewed and descriptively analyzed all included literature of EMR after earthquake (domestic and foreign). Results Learned from Wenchuan earthquake, EMR for Lushan earthquake were characterized as: a) Assess the situations of quake damage and injuries were scientifically assessed; human resources, funds and materials were reasonably distributed; and the EMR relied mainly on regional rescue power of Sichuan province. b) Patients’ with critical injuries were treated using “Four concentration treatment principles”, which resulted in a new medical record of zero death, 14 days after the earthquake. c) The experience of EMR after Lushan earthquake verified, enriched and improved lessons from Wenchuan, Yushu and Yiliang earthquake, which provided first-hand references of evidence-based decision making for earthquake EMR worldwide.
The West China hospital of Sichuan university has underwent four times emergency medical rescue (EMR) of earthquakes, measuring 5.7 Ms to 8.0 Ms on the Richter scale, happened at Wenchuan, Yushu, Yiliang and Lushan in recent 5 years, which gradually improved and supplemented Wenchuan experience. After Lushan earthquake, a total of 392 patients were received during 2 weeks. Among 321 hospitalized patients, there were 39 (12.15%) patients with critical injury and 14 (4.36%) patients who needed intensive care. 184 operations were performed. Based on the experiences of resource centralization, multidisciplinary cooperation, and hierarchical management, zero death, a new medical record, has been achieved among 43 patients with critical injury after centralized admission and treatment. A total of 12 medical rescue teams involving 88 healthcare workers were sent to the epicenter to join and guide EMR. Besides, rehabilitation and psychological experts came to Lushan on the first day of earthquake, and started clinical intervention of mental and physical health for people needed on the second day.
The injuries caused by earthquake were characterized as complicated injuries, multiple injuries, crush injury, commonly accompanied by the impairment of the organs, open wound with susceptibility to contamination, difficulties in the implementation of in-time treatment, and resource-limited settings. Considering the specialty of early treatment of earthquake victims and existing misconduct, we propose recommendations according to general principles of early rationale use of antibiotics, in order to treat the earthquake victims safely, effectively and feasibly, and to decrease wound infection rates after surgery.